The Legality of P2P Movie Downloads

The legal p2p movie downloading is not a relative concept up till now. The p2p software allows people to download the movies irrespective of their copy rights being protected. They claim that they only offer the middle man’s services by offering the people a software to share the files between them. Such movie downloading websites are on the safer side because they do not keep any sort of data on their servers.

There was a time when it was thought that the movies would be available for legal downloading on the p2p networks. It was considered so because of the increasing popularity of the p2p networks. But this was never to be done and even today, people are unable to find the legal p2p movie downloads. Internet users can purchase online movies but they can not download them using their favorite p2p clients.

The illegal movie downloads using the p2p clients are extremely popular these days. The number of legal downloads are very few and the people do not want to pay to buy movies online. They prefer the p2p clients. The problem is that users who are downloading the movies illegally are not being prosecuted. This is almost down to zero in the 3rd world countries where people use the p2p programs to download thousands of movies. They can even sell them after downloading and there is no legal action against them. This is mainly due to the limited access which these people have to the legal movie downloads. The legal movie downloads are geographic based and mostly people outside the U.S are not allowed to download from the U.S based websites.

The problem is that users are still not very clear about their status when they are downloading the movies from the p2p clients. They are not doing anything legal by downloading things from the p2p clients. But they are committing crime when downloading the copyrighted material. The use of p2p clients itself is legal. The p2p clients do not use their servers to store the data. They only enable users to share the files between them. This way, it remains legal and they can not be taken to the court. The responsibility falls on people who are sharing copyright content.

People can download some movies using the p2p clients which are legal to download. These movies are not huge in number. The movies which are in public domain now can be downloaded using the p2p clients and this would not constitute a crime at all.

The great discussion takes place when the movies broadcasted on TV are concerned. Some thinks that it is legal to download and others think that it is illegal to do so. What do you think?

Roy Bodwell

Gwen Campoli

Mervin Mahomly

July 2, 2010 at 22:25

A tip to save some money when watching movies it that as a substitute for heading to the movie theater on a busy weekend try renting your dvds. The regular price to rent a DVD is significantly less than 1 / 2 the price of only one movie ticket at your standard movie theater. Another advantage is that you may possibly lease about 4 movies through your nearby video shop for the same amount as 2 tickets at your movie theater.